Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan: Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan was born
on 12th August 1892 in the rural village
of Shiyali (also known as Sirkazhi),
in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. He
was an innovative mathematician and librarian from India. His most notable
contributions to the field were his five laws of library science (1931) and the
development of the first major analytico-synthetic classification system, the Colon classification
(1933). He helped to found the Madras Library Association, and lobbied actively
for the establishment of free public libraries throughout India and for the creation of a
comprehensive national library. Ranganathan's another major achievement was the
establishment of the Documentation Research and Training Centre at Bangalore in 1962.
Ranganthan was considered by many to be a workaholic. During his two
decades in Madras,
he consistently worked 13-hour a days, seven days a week, without taking a
vacation for the entire time. He is considered to be the father of library
science in India.
The Government of India awarded padmashree to Dr. S. R. Ranganathan for
valuable contribution in Library Science. In 1965, he was honored by the Indian
government for his contributions to the field with the title of "National
Research Professor." On September 27, 1972 at Bangalore, he died of complications from
bronchitis. Upon the centenary of his birth in 1992, several autobiographical
volumes and collections of essays on Ranganathan's influence were published in
his honor. Ranganathan's autobiography, published serially during his life, is
titled A Librarian Looks Back. |